PanKind, The Australian Pancreatic Cancer Foundation, will award $600,000 for Collaborative Research Grants in its 2020 grant round, supporting top Australian researchers to make an impact for pancreatic cancer, a disease on track to be the third biggest cancer killer this year. 

The $600,000 will be shared equally between the two successful collaborative research projects with PanKind’s grants aiming to encourage new ideas, build the capacity of Australian pancreatic cancer research and find new, more effective treatments to improve outcomes for patients. The Foundation, to date, has funded $7.6m into cutting-edge medical research at Australia’s top institutions since 2008. 

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal cancers with a current 5-yeaar survival rate of just 10.7%, and four out of every five patients diagnosed face a median survival of less than 12 months.  Almost 4000 people are diagnosed each year, with the disease claiming virtually the same number of lives as breast cancer.  

Most patients will be diagnosed with late stage, as metastatic cancer as the disease is extremely difficult to detect in its early stages. With no distinct early warning signs, pancreatic cancer is a debilitating and shocking disease that remains chronically under-funded. 

Michelle Stewart, PanKind CEO, said “We are pleased to enable talented researchers to collaborate in the area of pancreatic cancer to have greater impact, thanks to the support of our generous donors. Improving survival for patients will require collaboration from many groups on numerous levels including funding, advocacy and research.” 

The 2020 Collaborative Research Grants aim to provide funding to Australian researchers to participate in collaborative projects, encouraging cross-disciplinary collaboration, between research groups and other specialities, for example immunotherapy, nanotechnology, genomics and bioinformatics. 

“Collaboration grants often result in highly innovative ideas as researchers explore new collaborations across disciplines. Australia has some of the world’s strongest pancreatic cancer researchers and we are expecting an extremely high calibre of collaborative applications,” said Ross McKinnon, Chair of the PanKind Scientific Advisory Panel. 

 The 2020 Collaborative Research Grants applications are open now and will close in February 2021.